


Weigh me Down

by Boomchick



Series: Tumblr Prompts [9]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mer!Cloud, Nearly Drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boomchick/pseuds/Boomchick
Summary: Prompt fill from TumblrWalking by the seaside, Sephiroth sees what seems to be a drowning man. He is, to his credit, right about the drowning part.
Relationships: Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Series: Tumblr Prompts [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774831
Comments: 2
Kudos: 149





	Weigh me Down

**Author's Note:**

> One of a series of prompts written on Tumblr for those who are supporting the BLM movement. This one was requested by an anonymous user
> 
> If you've donated, protested, or otherwise supported black lives, you can come and make a request too! https://boomchickfanfiction.tumblr.com/

He was, before all things, a killer. That was what he’d been raised for. Bred for. Hojo had poured years and years of resources into making him so. Before all else he was death incarnate.

But he doubted even Death enjoyed its work.

So he was glad for the day. For a day to walk the grey ocean side, free for a moment from onlookers. He was ‘surveying the landing site.’ Ensuring it was free of danger. He was tempted to report back that it was. He didn’t want to see this grey beach with Shinra’s ships cutting through its waves. Didn’t want to see this lonely, soft-sand beach churned by footsteps.

Even looking back at his own made his stomach churn quietly. But destroying things was what he did. He turned away from it, trying to take some solace in the grey sand. The bleached-white wood sprouting up like bones.

The sea wind blew harder. Sent his silver hair flowing around his face. He pushed the arching bangs on his right side behind his ear to keep it out of his face. Glanced into the wind, out at the fog-coated waves. Which was where he saw it. That flash of something pale before the water churned in a brief thrash. He paused, squinting into the grey half-lit morning.

There it was again. That pale figure poking up through the water’s surface. A fish? No. A whale?

It twisted, and he was moving before he could think. Plowing into the water like a force of nature, pushing through the waves towards the twisting figure.

The face that he’d glimpsed had been twisted in pain.

He reached the dropoff and let himself step off it. Held his breath, opening his eyes against the burning agony of the seawater. Looked for the figure.

There.

He kicked up, neat and precise, even with water filling his boots, dragging him down. Gripped the body in both hands and pulled. But the body only moved a fraction of an inch before it pulled up short, jerking and twisting in his hands. Sephiroth heard the muffled sound of a scream, and offered a silent apology. Stuck, then. Sephiroth slid his hands down the body. Naked flesh of his torso, arms fumbling at his. He let them close on his hands and shove them down, guiding them towards what was–

Oh, he thought, blinking against the stinging water. That wasn’t flesh anymore. Smooth. Cool. Hard scales. Enormous.

There. Something steel, poking through the flesh, and when he touched it, the body thrashed again, the hands tightening on his, that same sound, someone crying out under the water. He searched along it, aware of his lungs starting to burn, but setting that aside for now. A problem for Sephiroth thirty seconds in the future.

He twisted in the water, elegant through long practice and training. Kicked lightly to gain a little height, coming up from below the trapped… Person? Creature?

He felt his way up the steel object and found a rope at the end. Thick, frayed, made even tougher by fraying in the water. He heard a desperate sound. Felt the body twist towards it. Peeked his eyes open to watch the face he’d only briefly seen bite at the rope, clawing at it, struggling, even as it made blood plume in the water from his impaled tail.

Sephrioth gripped the rope and kicked, pulling. But whatever it was connected to that was dragging the man down was either too heavy, or wedged too tight.

Another thrash of the body beside him, and he glanced up towards him. Watched as the creature tried to claw his way towards the surface. The tide was coming in still, and Sephiroth saw him only barely breach the surface, straining for every inch against the harpoon through his tail.

He breathed air then. Breathed air, and was trying to free himself before suffocating. Ah, said the part of himself that had been waiting for it to become necessary to breathe, about that.

Sephiroth choked against the burning that had caught up to him. Kicked up to the surface. Dragged in a breath of his own past the swell of waves. Felt the creature’s hands close on his. A silent request.

Sephiroth took a deep breath and let himself sink back under, letting those hands guide him down to the harpooned merman. Glanced out of his burning eyes at the frightened face. His hair was blonde, floating delicately around his face. Huge, sweet eyes. Fear in every line of him.

His hands squeezed Sephiroth’s arm tighter.

Sephiroth was bad at comfort. Bad at people. Bad at many things taht weren’t violent. But he pressed his hand over the merman’s briefly. Squeezed. Then turned his attention to the rope.

He gripped it, both hand around it. It was so wide his hands barely wrapped around it. He tried, at first, simply to pull it apart. But despite his strenght, his prowess, his power, that was fighting against the rope’s natural strengths. It only served to exhaust him. He let out a sound of annoyance, bubbles escaping him as he did. Kicked up to catch another breath. Watched the pale form beneath the water twist to do the same. Watched his eyes go wide under the water inches from the surface, but still below it.

Terror lanced through that expression. Sephiroth could have left. Could have given up. Could have brought Hojo back with him and offered him a strange, beautiful corpse.

The very thought made him sick.

He took another deep breath of air. Gripped the merman by the back of his head. Dipped his head under the water and pressed their lips together. Let out the air he was holding in to the merman’s mouth. Most of it escaped in surprise. Sephiroth surfaced again, panting, waiting, watching the merman’s wide eyes.

“Exhale.” He ordered, fighting to tread water. Even for him, this was… This was a lot. “Exhale! I can’t breathe for you if you’re full of stale air!”

He doubted his shouting helped, but he was wet. Freezing. Dripping. His eyes burned, and his hair was plastered to his face. The merman under his hands twisted, briefly, brows twisting in fear. In hope. He closed his eyes, and let out the breath he was holding so desperately in a stream of bubbles.

Sephiroth followed it moments later. Ducked his face beneath the surface. Locked lips with the merman, sharing his breath.

Those cold hands found him again. Held onto his arms, even as Sephiroth had to pull away to come back up for more air for himself.

He looked down, silently asking. Did he need more?

The merman tugged on him. Urged him down into the water with him, twisting back down and around towards his trapped tail.

How long can I breathe for him, Sephiroth wondered. How deep will the water get? Could I keep this up through the high tide? For hours?

The answer chilled him worse than the water. No. He couldn’t. The merman would drown if this kept on, no matter how hard he tried.

Something would have to be done.

And if there was anything he liked about himself, it was that he did not shy away from work that needed doing.

He dove back down, but went further than he had before. Heard a sound from the merman. An impatient, frightened sound. He’d tried to free himself by going deeper before, Sephiroth inferred. He didn’t htink Sephiroth could. He probably couldn’t even reach the bottom. The rope went down and down and down. The drop off into the ocean from the beach had really been sharp.

But Sephiroht didn’t need to get to the bottom. He just needed to get further away. Further away from those big blue eyes, and that floating blonde hair, and that strange tail. He glanced back. Lifted a hand. 'stay.’

The merman floating there, hair drifting, golden tail twisting against the harpoon even now… He fixed the image in his head.

Then he focused his energy into the fire materia he wore, closing his hand around he rope.

The explosion it caused was mostly steam. He knew this scientifically. 'Mostly steam,’ when it came to explosions, did not actually mean 'less dangerous.’

At first it was only burning heat. But it was the shockwave that really hurt. The percussive burst outwards, and then the weight of the water crashing back into him.

Yes, he thought, throttled by the force as the rope severed under his hands. I did think that might be the case.

He felt his stunned body–ears ringing, body shaking, drifting, non-complaint– suddenly regain the ability to draw breath. Felt it try to.

The salt water burned. Every inch of his windpipe. Pure, stupid, dumb-animal panic lanced through him, and he clawed upwards. Or what he thought was upwards. Clawed for anything. Then clawed at his own throat. Stuggling, full of water, breathe, breathe, breathe, b–

Hand gripped him. He felt the water dragging at his hair. At his waterlogged boots. At his ever-heavier limbs.

Then suddenly the coughing worked. He choked. Coughed. Choked again. Gagged and gasped and air, sweet air, he–

The body beside him let out a sob of strain. Sephiroth reached out automatically. Locked one arm around the slight frame of the merman who’d dragged him to the surface despite his impaled tail.

Neither of them was okay. They fought towards the shore together, silent and driven, each gasping for air, shaking. Gripping onto one another, Sephiroth kicking and swimming one-handed, the merman twisting his impaled tail with strained sounds of pain.

When Sephiroth’s foot struck sand below them, he let out a peal of startled laughter. Dragged his other foot forward, finding purchase below himself. Hooked both arms around the merman and dragged.

They collapsed together on the beach, gasping. Shaking. The merman’s hands had locked around Sephrioth in return. Hiding against his chest, breathing deep and heavy.

Sephiroth just flopped on the sand, his hair a strangling net around them both, the grey sand he’d so admired coating the side of his body where he fell.

“You,” Gasped the merman.

“Oh.” Sephiroth blinked. Stared down at the blonde hair, waterlogged as the rest of his companion. Glanced down at the macabre sight of his golden scales, impaled by the cruel, barbed harpoon. “You speak.”

“Who–who are you?” The merman asked, lifting his head. His lips were parted. Those lips that Sephiroth had pressed his own to, sharing precious air.

“Sephiroth.” He said softly, tilting his head after to cough free more of the saltwater still burning him from the inside out. “Wh-what about you?”

“I–” the merman shivered. It worked its way all the way through him. Sephiroth drew him closer on instinct alone. Wrapped his arm around the merman’s back. Tried to get his brain to work well enough to think what to do to help.

“I’m Cloud.” He finally managed.

“Cloud.” Sephiroth rasped. “I’m going to help you.”

“Breathe.” Cloud whispered in return. “Rest. You already did.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and for the request!  
> Please donate to https://atlsolidarity.org/ if you can to support my local BLM movement, or support your local black


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